Friday, 22 June 2012

John Hunter’s Museum of Monsters

HUNTER, JOHN (1728-1793), anatomist and surgeon.

"Hunter designed his museum to illustrate the entire phenomena of life in
all organisms, in health and disease. Its essential plan was
physiological. It included, besides wet preparations which enabled all
structures with similar functions to be compared, dried and osteological
preparations of all kinds, monsters and malformations, fossils, plants
and parts of plants, and all manner of products of diseased action.
There were also many drawings, oil-paintings, and casts illustrating
disease. He had apparently intended to give in a catalogue an account of
his observations in each department. On matters relating to dissection,
preservation, and embalming, his hints and directions are of the
greatest value."

The department which next claims our attention is that
containing preparations of monsters and malformations. These are disposed in
two divisions, according as the preparations are
preserved in spirit or in a dry state, and each division comprises four series,
as arranged by Hunter.

The first series contains examples of the preternatural
situation of parts. The second, of the addition of parts. The third, of the
deficiency of parts. The fourth, of hermaphroditism. Several curious and
valuable preparations are contained in this collection ; many have been added
since Hunter's death. Amongst the latter are to be numbered two in the first
series, which exhibit curious instances of one foetus becoming inclosed in the
belly of another. The first is that which occurred to Mr. Highmore, of
Sherborne ; in which the foetus was encysted in the belly of a young man of
seventeen. In the second, which occurred to Mr. G. Young, the containing child
was six months old when it died. The histories of both have been published.

Under the second head we find various examples of double
parts in animals ; amongst others, of a double uterus and vagina in a woman,
and one of the uteri containing a foetus of seven months.

The case of deficiency of parts is exemplified by
preparations of the heads of pigs and lambs, in the former of which animals
malformations appear to be very common. In several of these the whole of the
face which lies anterior to the ears is wanting ; in others there is but one
eye, in the centre of the forehead, with a proboscis from the forehead. Pigs so
constructed go under the name of elephant pigs.

The fourth series contains preparations from the
hermaphrodite cow, or free-martin, on the generative organs of which Hunter
wrote a paper in the Philosophical Transactions ; as also of the organs of
generation in hermaphrodite sheep and dogs. The organs of the hen pheasant,
which has taken on the plumage of the cock, are also here exhibited.

Amongst the series of dry preparations the most curious is
that of a double skull, which belonged to a child of six years of age. The
skulls are united by their vertices ; the upper one was supplied by
blood-vessels passing through the united portions ; and from the account given
by eyewitnesses, the upper head seems during life to have experienced
sensations, and to have exhibited mental operations, distinct from those of the
lower head.

These preparations are described in the fifth part of the
General Catalogue.

The works of John
Hunter, with notes, ed. by J.F. Palmer. (1835) 4 vols, Vol 1, pp. 181-183